Teresa Mull: Public Schools Are Breeding Grounds for Corruption and Violence

Some public school teachers are turning to violence to silence people with whom they disagree.

“Public school teachers are behind a leading far-left militant group that is part of the Antifa network that federal officials say is committing ‘domestic terrorist violence,’” The Daily Caller’s Peter Hasson reported recently. “By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), which has played a key role in riots in Berkeley, Sacramento, and elsewhere, has dozens of public school teachers among its members, including among its most prominent leaders.”

“By Any Means Necessary” sounds like a militaristic maneuver General George Patton would have ordered, not an organization attracting dozens of public school teachers. Yet violent protests have been cropping up with alarming frequency at institutions founded for the purpose of educating, which makes me wonder: Is there something about the nature of public education that makes such violence inevitable?

There are tons of qualified, respectable, hardworking public school teachers. My aunt and uncle are two such people. But the recent violent protests carried out by those who claim to be the gatekeepers of open-minded discussion, tolerance, and learning show there is a large swath of very dangerous people who are attracted to the public school system, which has proven to be a monstrous enterprise with nearly unlimited funds and barely-there standards for hiring and firing. Giving these people who favor censorship the authority to tell others how and what to think in our public school classrooms is asking for trouble.

Public education was created so families could avoid being penalized by the government, which demanded all children attend schools, regardless of whether parents wanted to educate their children at home. Government is nice like that. What started as a bad idea has become an out-of-control, gluttonous monster that is more concerned with protecting the interests of teachers unions than it is with helping children learn. Make no mistake about it: The public school system is composed of some of the most corrupt, power-hungry bullies imaginable—or, in other words, a picture-perfect government agency.

“One of BAMN’s most prominent organizers is Yvette Felarca, a Berkeley Middle School teacher and pro-violence militant,” Hasson wrote. “Felarca currently faces charges of inciting a riot for her role in the Sacramento violence.”

“Felarca was caught on video punching a neo-Nazi demonstrator. … Felarca’s group, By Any Means Necessary, was protesting against a white nationalist group,” CBS’ San Francisco affiliate reported. “A video shows Felarca repeatedly punching a man. The man had both hands up, walking to a line of police officers for help. Felarca and others dragged the man down and kicked him.

“Felarca is scheduled to teach at her Berkeley Middle School at the end of the month,” CBS added in its report. “The school legally cannot fire her unless she is convicted of a felony.”

These are the types of people put in charge of forming the minds of our nation’s young, impressionable children and tomorrow’s leaders. And it’s not as though this is a rare, isolated instance of one teacher behaving badly, either.

“BAMN organizer and high school teacher Nicole Conaway organized a ‘sickout’ at her school in 2015, leading other teachers in calling in sick to protest the policies of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder,” Hasson reported. “The sickout forced six Detroit-area schools to cancel classes, affecting nearly 4,000 students.”

Not surprisingly, BAMN teachers have also been accused of using school-sponsored field trips to indoctrinate students in far-left views.

Hasson reported BAMN is active in the nation’s largest teachers union and in many regional teachers unions, where the organization has been running its members as candidates to gain power and spread the BAMN agenda.

Knowing what we do today, no one should be shocked when the whole public school system, one that gives nearly irrevocable control over what others think to a set of intolerant progressives, inevitably transforms into the perfect storm for radical liberalism and corruption, as well as the violence that results from such an environment.

Fortunately, the most practical way to get rid of Antifa groups and activities—giving families an alternative to government schools—is gaining momentum across the country through a variety of school choice programs, including education savings accounts. This development is exactly why BAMN and others have stepped up their efforts in recent years to stifle other people’s free expression, and it’s not likely those efforts will stop (or even slow) anytime soon.

Teresa Mull (tmull@heartland.org) is a research fellow in education policy at The Heartland Institute.